Page 75 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

illustrated to them that the solutions to puzzles are often simple to see if we think

in unconventional ways. As people laughed and tore up their puzzles in
frustration when Koether showed them the solution, he stood up to make his
final point.

“We restrict our thinking for no good reason,” said Koether. “We do things
simply because that’s the way we always did them. I want you to know that our
commitment in serving your company is to always look outside the box for the
most innovative solutions possible to our problems. We’ll never do something
just because that’s the way we have always done it.”

To many business leaders pitching a lucrative account, this kind of puzzle-
solving exercise would simply be considered a clever presentation. But to Bob
Koether, it was a symbolic expression of his whole life in business.

Once, on a Xerox-sponsored trip in Cancun, Mexico, Bob and his brother
Mike spent the day out in treacherous waters on a fishing boat. After coming
ashore, they retired to Carlos O’Brien’s restaurant for tequila and beer and a
period of reflection on their lives in sales thus far.

“We knew that as well as we had done, we would never own boats like the
one we were just in if we remained at Xerox,” said Bob. “We talked about
possibilities in the bar, and it wasn’t long before we noticed some black T-shirts
on the wall with the word infinity on them. Then, for more than two hours, Mike

and I discussed just what the word infinity meant. Out of that discussion, a dream
was born, a dream that took shape in the form of Infinity Communications.”

Bob Koether and his brother believed that there was one vital area in which
Xerox was underperforming—and that was customer service. What if, they
asked, a company’s commitment to the customer was infinite? Not boxed-in, but
unlimited in its possibilities for creative service? With that concept as
motivation, the two brothers formed “Infincom” (short for Infinity
Communications) in the state of Arizona, and within 10 years they grew from six
employees and no customers into a 50-million business with more than 500
employees. And for the past three years straight, the Arizona Business Gazette
has ranked Infincom the number-one office equipment company in Arizona—
ahead of Xerox.

All of us tend to look at our challenges from inside a box. We take what
we’ve done in the past and put it in front of our eyes and then try to envision
what we call “the future.” But that restricts our future. With that restricted view,